By the early 1980s, he was showing his work in galleries in SoHo as one of the New York artists in the neo-expressionist movement, along with Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Francesco Clemente. He dated Madonna in the early 1980s, and then he met Andy Warhol, with whom he associated and collaborated for years. In 1985, he was on the cover of the New York Times Magazine.